Study: HACs represent 12.2% of legal liability costs

Medicare's no-pay policy for specific hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) has prompted one organization to quantify the legal liabilities that these conditions represent. The study reports that HACs represented 12.2 percent of total legal liability costs incurred among health care facilities in 2007. In addition, one in six legal claims against health care facilities were associated with HACs, injuries, pressure ulcers and foreign objects left in the body after surgery in 2007.

These findings were reported in Aon's "2008 Hospital Professional Liability and Physician Liability Benchmark Analysis."

Aon's report analyzed nearly 78,000 claims with a total of $9.3 billion of incurred losses across 1,200 facilities. Pressure ulcers were the most expensive condition for health care organizations, representing an average cost of $145,000 per incident in 2007, according to the report.